How to build a strategy for Horizon 2020

Many organisations don’t have or don’t know how to build a strategy for Horizon 2020. A good strategy for Horizon 2020 helps your organisation to get better results with proposals. Developing an organisational strategy requires input from different stakeholders: at least the management and the people actually participating in a Horizon 2020 proposal need to be involved.

Minimum needs for a Horizon 2020 strategy

A procedure to scan the upcoming Horizon 2020 calls and decide if your organization can participate in a call.

An active networking strategy to keep existing contacts and add new contacts for collaboration within Horizon 2020.

A procedure to estimate the finances of participating in Horizon 2020.

A method to build a consortium of partners in order to excellently execute a proposal.

Once your organisation has these essential building blocks, it can apply a consistent strategy to increase the chance of participating successfully in Horizon 2020. Parts of the Horizon 2020 strategy can be implemented by individual researchers, but other parts (like the procedure to estimate finances) need support from the management of your organisation.